“Now, look here, Zizi, we’re up against an enormously interesting case. It’s simple up to a certain point, and then it’s inexplicable. The murderer is one of the cleverest men on this planet. For, look. He arranged that letter deliberately, fixed up the Club servant scheme, to get Philip Barry’s signature on a blank sheet of paper. Having that, he later wrote in whatever he chose. His cleverness consisted, at this point, in not overdoing. Had he made the letter a threat of murder, it would have looked false on the face of it, for Barry is not like that. Well, he had this letter ready to plant in Gleason’s desk after he had committed his crime—and he did so. Next, he left no fingerprints on the telephone or on the revolver, save those of Gleason himself. Was that clever?” “Oh, Penny, it was! And he made the prints on the telephone with Mr Gleason’s fingers after Mr Gleason was dead! And he did the telephoning himself!” “Yes; how quick you are, Zizi! That’s exactly what happened, because that’s the only way it could have been. Now, a man clever enough for all that is clever enough for anything. Yet I can’t see how he did it. Nor do I grasp his motive.” “Jealous of Phyllis?” “That isn’t enough to account for the crime.” “No, it isn’t! He had another motive, and I’ve found it out. I found out up in Coggs’ Hollow.” “Going to tell me?” “You bet I am! Right away. How did you guess the man?” “I didn’t guess. I deduced from his alibi. Such a clever villain—what would he naturally choose by way of alibi?” “Just what he did do. Pretend not to have any—but when they investigate, they find he has a cast-iron one!” “Exactly, and Manning Pollard’s was all that. But I can’t see how he managed it.” “There’s only one way. He must have had a confederate who did the killing.” “No; a clever criminal doesn’t have a confederate. No; Pollard killed Gleason himself. By the way, Zizi, I found Pollard’s fingerprints on the Barry letter.” “But Dean Monroe did that.” “Dean Monroe asked Barry to sign it, but—he told me himself—Pollard gave him the paper and asked him to get Barry’s signature. This, Monroe did, and gave the paper back to Pollard. Later, Pollard told Monroe the plan had been given up. I dug that all out, without speaking to Barry about it. I don’t want Pollard to imagine we suspect him. Now, my child, what was his motive?” “A pretty strong one. It seems that Manning Pollard is an illegitimate child. He was born in Coggs’ Hollow, of unmarried parents. Later, his father and mother married, so he was legally legitimized. But of course, a stigma remains. Now, Mr Pollard is several years younger than Robert Gleason, so the assumption is that Robert Gleason, who lived all his boyhood in Coggs’ Hollow, knew this secret of Pollard’s birth, and had threatened to expose him, unless he desisted from trying to win Phyllis away from Gleason.” Pennington Wise thought a few moments.